@SLIGEACH_EIRE As soon as I saw eurogamer name, I definitively didn't bother clicking the link. I applause them for their objective Switch review, but they're somewhat unreliable.
I don't think it's cartridges. I think people are just increasing the price on purpose because there's barely any games to play right now. Even if the cartridges put the cost up a bit, no way it justifies a Bomberman game costing 50 USD, or RiME costing a third more expensive on the Switch than on other systems.
I don't think it's cartridges. I think people are just increasing the price on purpose because there's barely any games to play right now. Even if the cartridges put the cost up a bit, no way it justifies a Bomberman game costing 50 USD, or RiME costing a third more expensive on the Switch than on other systems.
this.
Switch games list,
Legend of Zelda BotW, Human resource machine, NBA Playgrounds, Street Fighter 2, Super Bomberman R, Snipperclips, Overcooked, World of Goo.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE That's a pretty awful news article. It cites no sources, has no comment from Nintendo, and queries only vaguely "cartridges cost more" without citing any figures or references, and doesn't cite how they arrived at that conclusion where many have noted carts are actually cheaper as BD pressing is actually fairly expensive. It's not like CDs.
Like @Azooooz said, those same costs would apply to 3DS, DS, GBA, GB as well. N64 was the last expensive cartridge but those, like SNES were actually daughterboards, not flash cartridges.
I think Tequila is foisting the image of their own development costs on Nintendo instead of simply being honest. They didn't make their own port for Switch, they hired a third party company. Not only did they hire a third party company, but they hired one that Nintendo itself hired for one of it's AAA ports. That kind of premium service doesn't come for free. That had to be quite expensive. As such the Switch port cost them a lot more to make. It has little to do with a cartridge, or they'd just have skipped physical entirely and said "no physical on Switch because of price." Frozenbyte is managing physical at a lower cost for a smaller game that Nintendo has highlighted way more. Puyo is being priced as a "3DS physical game" from a major publisher (Sega, not Koch in the US.) That part is just gouging because it's a new new console and they can.
Tequila did a good job in paying a premium company to do their port for Switch...they could have bought a lot of good faith with Nintendo customers with that move if they were just open about their costs instead of hiding them. There's no blame on cartridges versus BD. The costs of manufacturing are indeed high, but that includes cases, warehousing, distribution, sales agreements, etc. etc that are the same for BD and cart. If the cart costs more we're talking PENNIES more. At absolute very, horrible worst we're talking a $2 difference, but that's almost unthinkable...it's probably a $0.20-$0.80 difference or so at worst. On a scale of millions that's a lot. Not at this scale. Thse companies are charging $10 across physical and digital to "account for the costs" that are from best to worst between $.20-$2, for only half their sell-through.
@NEStalgia@Azooooz Keep in mind that 3DS, DS, etc have significantly lower development costs than Switch. They also used much smaller capacity cartridges.
The combination of those things can lead to much smaller profit margins on Switch.
This is a result of the status quo of digital and physical price parity to appease retailers.
If I were to guess, Nintendo probably shifts too much of the costs for the cartridges on 3rd party publishers. They should be eating the vast majority of the costs themselves for the sake of dev support.
Over time some of the issues will work themselves out as costs go down and devs/pubs learn to either do digital only or to do larger print runs to save money (cheaper in bulk!). They could also make their physical versions special editions that come with goodies like Puyo Puyo Tetris or all of Atlus' 3DS titles.
You do make a good point with RiME. Switch was added late in development and was never factored into the original costs. They hired another company to port it, which costs money. The Switch version of RiME is basically an extra project on it's own.
Sonic Mania is the other game being ported to Switch by Tantalus. Sega should be able to eat those additional costs though.
@IceClimbers if you were developing exclusively for 3DS/Switch that might be true, but we're talking a port of a multiplat to a platform that numerous devs, big, small, and members on this forum, (seemingly all except the dev in question) have all praised how simple a process it is. Dev costs shouldn't be remarkable here compared to PS4/XBone if you're not paying the markup of a middleman. If you are paying the markup of a middleman and passing that cost on it's fine, but it's dishonest to kind of hide and dance around that reality. Just say "we weren't going to do switch and don't have the time, but we see demand and though it will have to cost more we'll support Switch too by hiring someone else to do it." Done.
The cartridge capacity doesn't matter. 3DS cartridges were priced out 6 years ago. Prices of memory have collapsed since then. A small switch card likely costs less than a small 3DS card did 6 years ago. So for any given year, the pricing shouldn't have shifted. It still doesn't change the fact that the cost difference between a BD and a 3DS cart is going to be minimal (and might still favor the cart...that article's lack of sources not withstanding.) We're comparing the cost of a cart vs the cost of a PS4 BD, all other things are equal. And it doesn't add up. This isn't about carts, it IS about development costs, but that involves the route they took for development for this platform, not the platform itself.
Interestingly smaller batches stand to gain the MOST from carts vs BD. BD, once the imprint is set up, the larger the production run the cheaper per disc in large scale. Small runs involve setting up the imprint for a smaller run and thus per unit costs are more. For carts, it's just a copy to any generic blank and a sticker. No imprint specific tooling involved. Again worst case (very worst case) we're talking a $2 difference. I'm more than happy to pay $2 for a cartridge. I'm sure most people are. $10 is a different problem. MOST of the cost of production isn't the cart or the disc. It's the whole production process including printed box covers, sticker/CD-label, plastic boxes, setting up the fab, distribution. That cost is static whether it's BD or cart and represents most of the cost of production.
The other thing with Rime was that it was the game trotted out by Sony at E3 like it was first party, and then the next day they said it was also coming to WIiU. Which means WiiU work was likely partly done before abandoned. I suspect they're cost shifting WiiU losses onto Switch customers. Given that this is, so far, the only developer trying to say Switch ports are difficult contrary to so many other reports, there seems to be some serious disconnect between them and Nintendo at the moment.
Yeah, Sega can eat the costs, and they also have more bargaining power for a good price from Tantalus. "We worked on Sonic and Zelda" opens many doors and is worth doing for a lower price. "We worked on that Rime thing" a lot less so.
I think the cartridge cost thing is bologna. I just think companies like to try and cash in during a system launch when competition is low for the moment. I mean, this is the promised land right now if you have a game on the Switch. When a consumer goes into Gamestop or whatever to buy a Switch game, they have, what, five or six retail games to choose from? Bump those prices up for a bit, baby!
I was playing Zelda in handheld mode when I tried to use the capture button. Nothing happened, carried on playing. I then tried a short press of the Home button. Nothing happened. I then long-pressed the Home button. The sleep mode option window came up, and I could still manoeuvre Link using the thumbsticks, but the face buttons and touchscreen became unresponsive. Everything then became unresponsive, frozen. My mind raced as I panicked about my Switch dying right before my eyes, I was gonna have to let the battery just run down and hope it would restart ok. I tried one desperate hold of the power button. Held it. Held it. Kept holding it. And the thing shut off...
Restarted fine and playing normally now, so fingers crossed it was a one off. The unit was down to 1 or 2 % battery at the time, so maybe that was a factor.
You guys had me at blood and semen.
What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?
@gcunit
Yea, that could definitely be a factor. Never fun with that kind of thing happens. I had a random, complete desync of my right Joycon last night when I turned the Switch on to play in bed. I disconnected it, hit the sync button, and I had to wait I would say a good 10-15 seconds for it to sync back to the system even though it was literally inches away from it. It's been fine since.
Random, wonky stuff always happens with new tech. I remember my Xbox One being a nightmare at first with going to the home menu out of a game/media service, going back in to the game, etc. It would hang and sometimes kick me out of the game or become unresponsive.
@NEStalgia@Azooooz Keep in mind that 3DS, DS, etc have significantly lower development costs than Switch. They also used much smaller capacity cartridges.
Keep in mind that Bomberman, a 2GB game, is $90AU on cartridge and $65AU digitally. Conversely Breath of the Wild, a 16GB game, is $79AU RRP digitally, on cartridge and on Wii U. There is also one game here, Has Been Heroes, that is listed at $40AU full RRP for the cartridge. I don't doubt for a second that this is mostly a case of publishers and retailers price gouging.
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@gcunit I had a similar thing today with the photo and home buttons not working. Odd. Doesn't concern me massively, as it seemed to be a one off occurrence and didn't have any long term impact, but was a bit strange at the time.
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